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Grants for Underserved Populations

Health Professions Training Programs Grants

Minority Faculty Fellowship grants increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty at health professions schools. The grants enable eligible schools to provide a stipend and a training allowance to help underrepresented minority students gain the skills necessary for faculty positions and provide health services to rural or medically underserved populations.

Northern Arizona University Department of Dental Hygiene recruited an American Indian fellow from the Lakota tribe who coordinated the Ottens’ Dental Hygiene Hopi Health Care project, which successfully integrated dental hygiene services on the Hopi reservation. The project provided oral health education and dental hygiene services to American Indians, by rotating dental hygiene students to the Hopi Dental Clinic on a regular basis. It also served as recruitment opportunity to get Hopi young people into health professions.

Area Health Education Centers are partnerships between communities and academic institutions that train health professionals. AHECs reach out to young people in underserved communities and help them develop the skills needed to become health professionals, provide clinician training experiences in underserved communities, and provide continuing education to clinicians already working in those communities.

Centers of Excellence are health professions schools that establish or expand programs for underrepresented minority students and faculty. They focus on improving academic performance, developing minority health curricula and clinical education, and conducting research on minority health issues.